Detection and tracking vehicles using a zoom camera over a pan-and-tilt unit

The concern about safety in mobile vehicles and means of transport normally used by people has increased considerably in last decades. Different sensorial systems have been developed and improved in order to save lives, inside vehicles and outside them. In this way, imaging and vision systems can be considered to increase the visibility and detect, fix or mobile vehicles/obstacles from a moving vehicle or static/strategic position. There are different approaches to capture an image sequence from a camera and analyze them. In this paper, zoom cameras are used to improve the safety of transport systems. Having calibrated the zoom camera the goal is make measurements from far away obstacles and mobiles, increasing the precision and reliability of conventional visual systems made up of cameras with fixed lenses, fixed resolution. Besides, the zoom camera is mounted over a pan-tilt unit that gives the device the possibility to focus on different region of interest. The whole imaging system is also calibrated to reference its measurements to the global reference system.